By Oliver Luck
It is more than a cliché that “everything is bigger in Texas.” Residents of the Lone Star State are quick to point out to visitors that the San Jacinto Monument is not only the largest column monument in the world, but is also 15 feet higher than the Washington Monument. Similarly, the State Capitol in Austin tops out 15 feet higher than the Nation’s Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Texans can also brag on the Texas Medical Center, the single biggest medical complex in the world. More than 65,000 people work in the complex, which houses some of the finest research and treatment institutions in the country. More than 23,000 students are enrolled in the 11 educational institutions that call the Texas Medical Center home. The list goes on and on.
But there is something in Texas even bigger than these impressive man-made structures, something that is admittedly difficult to measure and quantify. It is the size of the collective Houston heart that has been on display since September 2005. No, I am not referring to a new exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, but rather to the incredible generosity displayed by a large community in the wake of the 2005 hurricane season.
The 2005 storm season was particularly trying along the Gulf Coast. From Beaumont to the Keys, the states that make up the Gulf Coast—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—were battered by an unprecedented number of hurricanes and tropical storms. In fact, at the tail end of this year’s hurricane season the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ran out of English names for the storms and was starting to work its way down the Greek alphabet.
In a twist of irony, Houston, which took a direct hit in 1983 from Hurricane Alicia, was impacted more by a storm that did not bring even a drop of rain or a wisp of wind to our city. Hurricane Katrina, which struck land on Sunday, September 4, just east of New Orleans—more than 250 miles from Houston—had an unprecedented impact on our city. Let me explain.
By Monday afternoon, those of us who were following the storm realized that the worst-case scenario was playing out in New Orleans. The levees, which for years had defied Mother Nature and held at bay the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, were breached and the city was beginning to drown.
By the middle of the week Houston was welcoming busloads of evacuees at a variety of emergency shelters, including the venerable old Astrodome. City and county officials were stretched thin as they responded to a myriad of requests for mass shelters, medical care, transportation, food, and water. After the water had ebbed, Houston took stock of the impact of what had become the single largest evacuation in American history.
More than 200,000 residents of Louisiana evacuated to Houston and are still living in the greater Houston area. Within a span of a few days the population of the city grew by over ten percent. In other words, Houston added the equivalent of the total population of the five largest cities in West Virginia. Schools in the Houston area added 25,000 K–12 students, surpassing the total student population in the Monongalia and Marion County School districts.
In addition, local colleges and universities, including Rice, the University of Houston, Prairie View, and Texas Southern, added 6,000 new students, equaling about one-half of the pre-Katrina enrollment of Tulane University, one of the schools forced to close its doors in New Orleans. In fact, the Tulane administration operated out of an office building in Houston as it planned the school’s January reopening.
The general sentiment is that many, if not most, of our displaced neighbors, will remain in Houston. The local economy, buoyed by a robust energy sector that continues to announce record profits and increased trade at the Port of Houston, is as strong as it ever has been and will be able to absorb the evacuees into the workforce. Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, already growing at a steady clip, will witness a substantial increase for 2005.
As dramatic as the changes have been lately, all of this will not faze Texans. After all, bigger is better in the Lone Star State, particularly when it describes the magnanimity shown by Houstonians during the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Oliver Luck graduated from WVU with honors in 1982. He is chief executive officer of Harris County Houston Sports Authority, the governmental entity created in 1997 to provide the financing, construction, and management oversight of the three large sports and entertainment venues in Houston: Minute Maid Park (home of the Houston Astros), Reliant Stadium, (home of the Houston Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo), and the new downtown multipurpose arena (home of the Houston Rockets and Comets).